I want to become a healer!

[boris]

hello good people, i have a strong desire to become a healer, i think there is something so beautiful in putting yourself out entirely for the benefit of others.

I practice trance meditation twice daily and robert's NEW and have some practise with energy sheilds at a basic level, so you may say im at the bottom rung, but it is someting i wish to develop and hopefully use effectively for the benefit of others one day.

can anyone here point me towards essential writings on the subject, or has any advise of their own?

thanks.

Hi boris,
The best recommendations I can give you is to study Robert's NEW tutorial and work on your energy body. Once you've got the hang of that, study his Healing With Heart and practice on friends and family. Here are the links to both:
http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials/?BoardID=18
http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials/?BoardID=8
Feel free to post questions as you go along. All of this is excellent free info and what a lot of us who are trained in other healing techniques believe is the best. And, have fun!

[gorillabait]

Hi boris, though Robert says that his Healing from the Heart method encompasses and surpasses most other methods (being the fundamental principal behind them all), that doesn't mean that checking out other methods won't be beneficial.

Here are two links to interesting Reiki pages, both with "empowered" images.

This image will send Reiki healing to you, it's very useful. It helped me through some difficult times in the past.
http://www.threshold.ca/reiki/tryout.html

This link will attune you to Reiki, though in a mild way. If you're interested in healing, you probably would be interested in the experience.
http://threshold.ca/reiki/reiju_gift.html


Let me know if you enjoy these links, or if they prove meaningful to you. Believe me, Robert Bruce and NEW were some very important milestone-discoveries in my life, but every little thing helps.

[violetsky]

Dear boris,

My favorite books for teaching how to become a healer are by Barbara Ann Brennan. Look for these two books, "Hands of Light" and "Light Emerging." Unfortunately attending her school is VERY expensive. It makes university look VERY cheap. Her books are excellent though.

There are certain aspects of learning how to become a healer that are best taught directly from a teacher. One classic example of this is how to tune into certain energies. Until you know the feel of these energies you cannot easily tune into them. A teacher can send these energies to you and train you how to use them. If you are really deeply seeking to become a healer I would be willing to take you the next step but please read the two books by Barbara Ann Brennan first. They lay an important foundation. Also, please keep up Robert's energy work because it will help break up blockages within you that will allow healing energies to flow more easily and smoothly through you. Another thing a teacher can do for you is help clear any major blockages that you were unable to clear out before working as a healer.

Deepest Respects,
violetsky

[sash]

That is an impressive school violet ! From their website it looks like this organization offers an actual B.S. in Healing, which is quite remarkable. It comes across like quite a bit of commitment is required to undertake something like this, it does seem like it would be worth it though.
I've heard from a few friends in CA that uni is affordable for most there, but comparative to the US and AU universities a 4-year program (the courses offered at the mentioned sch) rank about the same in terms of fees.

Re Healing
The most helpful book on healing for me so far has been Quantum Touch (Richard Gordon) but I haven't read that much on healing in particular. I can state that QT is quite a simple and effective method to learn and practice without too much effort or prior experience though.

[Rhone]

After reading up on Reiki and Quantum Touch, I finally looked at Robert Bruce's Healing With the Heart tutorial (http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials/?BoardID=8) and I find myself preferring Bruce's method. It's simple, direct, effective, and you can read it for free and quickly get the information on how to do it without reading through all the fluff you get in a full length book. And of course, since it's from Robert Bruce, it fits well with the NEW stuff you're already practicing. It also takes advantage of being in a trance state--something that other healing methods overlook.

That said, it's still good to study other systems out there. They all basically boil down to focusing energy with intent to heal. You may find that you like something else a bit more than Healing With the Heart, or you may find ideas from different systems that work well together, giving you an ecclectic approach that works better for you than using only the techniques from one system.

In that vein, I'll second the recommendation of Richard Gordon's Quantum Touch: The Power to Heal. QT is actually very similar to Bruce's method; like with Bruce's method, the basic technique involves combining energy and deep breathing by drawing energy in when you inhale, then focusing that energy in your hands when you exhale. It also teaches feeling and moving energy with tactile senses, like with NEW. In QT, however, you draw the energy all the way through your body up to the crown chakra, instead of focusing it in the heart. QT also doesn't mention the usefulness of healing from a trance state.

Even if you prefer Healing With the Heart, the Quantum Touch book is worth reading for some of the "advanced techniques"--like feeling/imagining your energy as a swirling vortex when you move it through your body--and information on healing specific pains/conditions.

If you're interested in Reiki, Diane Stein's Essential Reiki is a good book to get; the author is unfortunately female-centric, but that's worth overlooking since she includes stuff that other Reiki writers purposely hold back so that you'll have to blow your money learning in person.

My next book-buying binge will have to include something on Pranic Healing, which looks interesting to me, though I can't comment on it yet.

That's funny, Rhone.

Diane Stein's Essential Reiki is a good book to get; the author is unfortunately female-centric

I never thought about it. What does she say that makes it "female-centric"?

[Rhone]

I never thought about it. What does she say that makes it "female-centric"?

For clarity I should say that the information she provides is no less valuable to a man than it is to a woman (otherwise I wouldn't recommend it); when I say she's female-centric it's more her wording and writing style and some random feminist things she says.

For starters she refers to the Reiki practitioner and person being healed in her examples as "the woman." Now, using "she" and "her" as generic pronouns instead of "he" and "him", as she does, is fine; there's unfortunately no gender-neutral, singular pronoun for referring to a person. But she could easily use "the person" for all the places where she writes "the woman".

Here's an example sentence copied from the book: "The woman receiving the healing may be restless through it, but she will become quiet when you move to the next position." In this sentence "the woman" is referring to the person you are performing Reiki on, and there was no reason not to say "the person" instead. She does this consistently throughout the book.

While she avoids being overtly sexist, her wording sends the subtle message that healing is primarily the domain of women. (Note that Stein also has books titled "All Women are Healers" (as if men aren't?) and "The Woman's Book of Healing".)

I have to leave for work in a couple minutes, so I don't have time to comb through the book and find some of the statements that bugged me a bit, but here is one that touched a nerve in me from chapter 2, page 21 of my copy (the emphasis is added by me):

"People in this culture, particularly women, have been so fully trained not to express their feelings that opening up a strong emotion can be very frightening."

I completely agree with that statement, except for the "particularly women" part that left me baffled. Our culture is notorious for allowing women to freely share their emotions with other women while not allowing men to show any kind of weakness. Countless times I've watched women open up to each other and receive strong emotional support from friends and family, while men who try doing the same either get shunned or get the "suck it up and be a man" response. I've noticed that even many of those who make an effort to be supportive toward sensitive men end up gradually, subconsciously losing their respect for them.

Anyway, it's not really a huge deal and it doesn't ruin the book. I was very deliberate about calling Stein female-centric and not necessarily sexist. (Though I think a male equivalent would be branded as sexist.) I get more enjoyment from teachers/writers whose perspectives are more mature and balanced, but as far as providing people with all they need to know about learning Reiki, Stein's book serves it's purpose well.

Wow, I never noticed that while reading. That's really odd. You are completey right, though, in everything you said. You Go, Boy!!

[CFTraveler]

I would like to comment on something, which is not to defend anyone- it's just to shed light about the historical view that academia has taken on female role models.
There is a view among anthropologists and religious historians that characterize healers as female-energy practicioners, because of the archeological and religious information of how our cultures developed. The still prevailing idea is that before judeo-christianity, actually up to prehistoric time, religions in africa and europe had a religious life that was based on the hunter-gatherer paradigm- men hunted, women gathered- therefore the female energy became identified with agriculture, fertility, and nurturing, including healing. Those are the periods where you see the 'mother goddess' images (Willendorf Venus, for example) and where females were seen as bringers of life and healers. After socio-cultural changes, mostly christian and prechristian in some places (like India after the Aryan invasion) the religions shifted to male-dominated, where male deities became more important and war replaced healing as the more important occupations. As this happened, previously revered female healers became witches, (in Europe this would be the Baba Yaga syndrome). So to make a long explanation a bit simpler, healing has traditionally been considered a female occupation, whether it is physical or emotional.
About the only exception to this point of view is some Native American traditions who went from matriarchal to patriarchal and back and forth within different tribes, depending on who were the elders in the tribe. I'm sure this may not be true of many of the larger tribes, but for example many of the seminole tribes varied in their approach from generation to generation, and is determinable only in studying gravesites, as hard as that is. (Most are underwater.)
So regardless of her feminism or lack of it, the view of healing as female is kind of historical status quo, as unfair as that is, especially in modern times.